New Worlds for Geoscience Teaching: Using Online Games and Environments

Cathy Manduca

Director, Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College

What is your experience with on-line games or environments?

I have little direct experience with on-line games and environments, though my son used to give me the backstory to games like Alpha Centauri on our backpacking trips and my daughter was hooked on the Sims for a while. From this I understand why Allan is excited by games that aren't based on multiple choice, and I appreciate that students can learn to understand things like the value of natural resources and the feedbacks of complex systems from these kinds of experiences.

Here are some things that I have worked on that are relevant to our discussions:

These sites pulls together a number of resources we have developed over the years addressing the use of scientific data in teaching geoscience. Most recently, we ran a workshop in February aimed at showcasing what people are doing in their classrooms, where the geoscience research front is going with data visualization and modeling, and how these tool/ideas might be used in teaching. The web resources from the workshop are still being developed - so it is useful to check out the program where you can find powerpoints, posters, and essays from the participants and speakers. Key ideas that are useful to our work are

the ways in which students struggle with models, the importance of teaching modeling, and some resources/examples of people using state of the art models

3d models useful for research purposes are really powerful for upper division students (e.g. GeoMapApp and IDV) – these models are distinct from tools for making polished illustrations

the power that comes from customized data manipulation tools vs the ease that comes from using widespread tools like Google Earth

visualization tools for making wow illustrations that lower barriers to interpretation (e.g. GeoWall)

Kim Kastens and Steve Reynolds both gave keynotes at this workshop that are worth looking at (linked from program). Kim did a tour de force on research on learning that illuminates our teaching with data, visualizations and models that is relevant to this group – object vs spatial visualization; scaffolding visual learning;distributed cognition.

Cathy Manduca --Discussion

Hi Cathy,
As you know its a little scary out there. When any physical or natural scientist/teacher begins to look at the literature of cognitive psychology about spatial ability, it enough for most sane people to run back into the rock lab. The same is also true for games. In many ways this workshop points to the need in our community for bootstrapping interested geoscientists into the basics of gaming theory and its vocabulary. The payoff is that those psychologists have some really great insight and we do have something to game about, and geoscientists are of course in my humble opinion the best-prepared group for assimilating the rest of science anyway. I'm working on my contribution of papers but where should these go? I uploaded some pdfs yesterday but have no idea if they are listed anywhere.

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